The Negotiation. Tyler Snell Anne

and the ones he did occasionally babysit for friends didn’t live in Darby. Point of fact, he’d never been inside the middle school before. A wave of cool air mixed with the faint smell of cleaning supplies pressed against his face as he moved from the outside concrete to the beige tile inside. The door shutting behind him was the only sound that reverberated across the hall in front of him. For once, the quiet didn’t sit right with him.

      He held his gun higher and went to the glass door closest to him marked Main Office. It was locked. Another closed door could be seen at the end of the room with the principal’s nameplate across it. Gaven and the other student were hiding on the other side.

      Dane moved his attention back to the hallway in front of him. It cut to the right and was empty. Closed doors lined each side along with small lockers around the bottom half of the walls. Dane stayed alert as he hurried to the first set of doors. Both were locked. He went to the next two. They were also locked. He kept on until there was a room with a door wide open. His heart hammered in his chest. Some of the desks inside had been toppled over, a broomstick was broken in two and, in the middle of it all, there was a discarded cell phone.

      Dane didn’t bother picking it up. He knew it belonged to Rachel.

      This was where she must have fought the men.

      Her cry echoed in Dane’s mind.

      He hadn’t liked hearing it over the phone.

      He didn’t like remembering, either.

      Moving as quietly as he could, Dane exited the room through its second door. If Rachel had run in through the main school entrance and then into the classroom, he’d bet she would have gone deeper into the school rather than back outside. That was if she had broken away from the men and wasn’t in their custody now.

      Dane shook his head.

      He wasn’t going to think about that just yet.

      The adjoining hallway led to another that formed three sides of a box that made up the school. Most of the doors were shut and locked. Dane checked the bathrooms quickly and wordlessly. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. No one made a sound. If Rachel and Lonnie had run this way, their options to hide had been limited. By the time he made it to the end of another hallway, he worried that they might not have had the chance to even make it that far.

      But then he saw it. An open door at the end of the hall.

      Dane hurried over. The door led into a small gym. Bleachers were pulled out, a few soft mats were pushed into the corner and light from outside streamed in through the tall windows on either side of the room. Two doors that must have led to the locker rooms were located on the far wall, another was in the corner and had a set of locked chains around the handles. A soccer field, surrounded by trees, at the end of the property could be seen through the glass on the top half of each door.

      Or at least where the glass had been.

      One window was completely busted out.

      Dane cursed beneath his breath as he got closer. There was blood on the broken glass. Someone had busted it in an attempt to escape. Dane cursed again as he shook the handle of one of the doors. The chains clinked their objections. If Rachel had broken out of the school, she must have been desperate.

      Dane lowered his gun and kicked the door hard.

      He should have been there sooner.

      He should have—

      Movement out of the corner of his eye made him spin on his heel. His gun came up high and ready.

      “Dane?”

      Rachel peeked out from under the closest set of bleachers. A boy was at her side.

      Dane could have sung in relief.

      While it had been years since he’d seen the woman in person, he realized right then and there he hadn’t forgotten the details of what made Rachel Rachel.

      Her hair might be shorter, but it was still dark, smooth and straight. It framed a long, thin face with high cheekbones and a faint dimple in her chin. Her complexion was tanned, though, if memory served him correctly, Dane would bet it was a farmer’s tan. Rachel had always liked to go outside but wasn’t a fan of sunbathing. He’d often teased her when she wore shorts and her ankles and feet were different shades.

      But of all the details Dane remembered, it was her eyes that made him feel like they were suddenly in the past.

      Denim blue. Like a favorite pair of worn blue jeans.

      They fastened to him now, a mix of emotions he didn’t have time to separate and examine. “Are you two okay?”

      He lowered his gun but didn’t holster it. Just because he hadn’t seen the mystery men didn’t mean he was letting down his guard.

      “Yeah, we’re—” Rachel started but the boy, Lonnie, interrupted.

      “She cut herself good when she broke the window,” he said, voice stronger than Dane would expect in the situation. He motioned to her arm. It was pressed against her chest, her other hand cradling her wrist.

      “It’s not that bad. Just a little blood. I’m fine.” She must have read the question in his expression. “I thought if it looked like we made it outside, they would go outside and we could hide and wait it out here.”

      Dane couldn’t deny that plan was impressive, if not risky. “The van you said was out front is gone. And, as far as I could tell, the rest of the school is empty. Except for Gaven and the other student.”

      Rachel had opened her mouth, worry already in her eyes, when he hurried to add, “Who are both fine and locked in the office.”

      Rachel let out a sigh of relief, but her body didn’t start to relax until a welcomed sound started in the distance.

      Sirens.

      Dane flashed the boy a small smile. “Backup has arrived.”

      * * *

      THE EMT HAD cleaned and bandaged the cut along the top of her wrist but hadn’t gotten to scolding her until he’d looked at the swollen parts of her knuckle.

      “You’re lucky the glass was already compromised,” he had said. “Or else you might have broken your hand instead. It’s going to hurt for a few days, regardless.”

      Rachel had kept her mouth shut on the EMT’s commentary. While he had only been trying to help, he hadn’t been the one running through the school trying to keep away from men hell-bent on grabbing her and the kid in her care. She had broken the window because she was going to try to get Lonnie and herself through. They’d already used up their luck by losing the two men for a minute or two, giving them enough time to get into the gym. But the moment after she’d cleared the glass away, Rachel had made a split-second decision to keep hiding.

      Guilt and worry and fear wound around her stomach, even though she was now safe. It was just dumb luck that the men had seen the broken window and believed what she had wanted them to. That she had run to the woods with Lonnie at her side. Once they’d seen the empty window, they’d run in the opposite direction, both swearing.

      It could easily have gone the other way.

      Now Rachel was sitting in the Riker County Sheriff’s Department, staring at a nameplate that read Captain Dane Jones and struggling to shake loose the added sorrow trying to creep in. Even without the morning she’d just had, being in the building was enough to turn her mood. Down the hall, years ago, she’d listened to Dane and his colleagues attempt to do their best to save her husband.

      She’d seen the way their bodies had been as tense as hers as they’d gone through each scenario with vigor. The way their determination had kept their brows furrowed and their lips thinned. The way they’d tried to assure her everything would be okay.

      However, perhaps the singular thing she remembered most from that day was just after the storm had broken outside and Dane had walked in. She’d been waiting